time for 2015 Stella Awards …….

You can’t fix STUPID!!

It’s time again for the annual “Stella Awards”…………
For those of you who are unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee all over herself and successfully sued the McDonald’s restaurant New Mexico, where she had purchased a cup of coffee.

She took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever think that someone could get burned doing that, right?

So…………. here we go again with the facts and figures in the most recent outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S.

Keep your head scratcher handy.
The 2015 Stellas are:

* SEVENTH PLACE *

Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running loose inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the toddler nobody was supervising was Robertson’s son.

Start scratching!
* SIXTH PLACE *

Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California won $74,000 plus medical expenses when a neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn’t notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor’s hubcaps.

Scratch some more…..
* FIFTH PLACE *

Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn’t re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to sit for eight, count ’em, EIGHT days, surviving on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner’s insurance company claiming undue mental anguish. Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company had to pay Dickson $500,000 for the allegedly traumatic experience.

Keep scratching. There are more…
* FOURTH PLACE *

JerryWilliams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the Stellas this year when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor’s beagle – even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner’s fenced yard. Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun.

Pick a new spot to scratch, you’re getting a bald spot….

* THIRD PLACE *

Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania ………….. a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.

Only two more so ease up on the scratching…

*SECOND PLACE*

Kara Walton, of Claymont, Delaware sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000….. plus dental expenses, of course.
AND THE WINNER IS…………

* FIRST PLACE *

This year’s runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home.. On her very first trip, after partying at an Oklahoma University football game, having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and left the driver’s seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the roadway, crashed and overturned. Mrs. Grazinski and her attorney sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner’s manual that she should not leave the driver’s seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her…………are you sitting down?…………$1,750,000

PLUS a new motor home, naturally.

Winnebago has changed the wording of their manuals as a result of this legal action, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.
Got any hair left?